Hangers on in capitalism are a danger to the system

Making a spoon is not a sophisticated science but it requires some brains to design it and it also requires some technology and skilled labour to produce it. Once produced, somebody needs to take the trouble to transport it to where people can buy it; to a supermarket for example.

Somebody owns this supermarket or some rent is paid for its use. Inside the supermarket there are the workers who keep the place clean, put the goods on the shelves and finally sit at the teller to receive the money from which the consumer of the spoon acquires possession of this commodity.

All the people I have described above in the production and sale of the spoon, a commodity in the capitalist market place, are the ones who actually create or add value to what is finally consumed by the purchaser as a spoon.

But there are others who will hang on to the process and claim they too must take some pieces of the money consumer pay for spoons. These others are the Government, lawyers, insurers, bankers, public relations officers, marketers, lobbyists, unionists, and even soothsayers and fortune tellers.

Ask yourself one fundamental question: How many of the above are really necessary in the process of producing and selling the spoon? In the age of the Internet for example, when Nakumatt can post all its information in its website for those who want to know what is on sale, do we really need the marketer and the public relations guy?

Those are two down: We are left with seven.

What about the lobbyist who insists on harassing MPs to ensure that the prices of spoons are kept stable so that mothers who are using small spoons to feed their babies do not pay too much. Supposing Parliament had all the information necessary and posted in the website of the Ministry of Trade and Industry what spoons should cost and what quality to be observed in every spoon, would such lobbyists be necessary? Not at all.

That’s another one gone, six more to go.

If the owners of Nakumatt know that the supermarket cannot really open its doors to customers without all the workers being there; can management really afford to mistreat its workers? Supposing the Government made it very clear that given the cost of living and the purchasing power parity of wages today, the pay package of such workers must not vary across the board, and they must earn liveable wages, would trade unions find clients in Nakumatt. I doubt it.

That is another one gone, five more to go. And now we realise that unionism is as a result of the irrationality of capital under capitalism. Capital, however, behaves very differently under social democracy where the power of labour over capital is enhanced; and as productivity increases, capitalists are more willing to bring in labour to have shareholding in enterprises such as supermarkets so that labour is not alienated from the products of their sweat.

We are now left with the Government, bankers, soothsayers, insurers and lawyers. These actually quite often claim more from the price paid for the spoon than any of the others. And the least productive of these all are lawyers, insurers and soothsayers, for they belong to the same category of ‘trading in fear’.

To make you see why these three are not really necessary just think of the peasant farmer; she produces bananas in the family garden, takes it to the market, sells and buys bread and jam to go home and eat happily with her family. No lawyer has appeared to be of any value; no insurer has had the opportunity to make money out of her fears and no soothsayer has been of any use to the process.

We are now left with the Government and the banker. By charging Value Added Tax on the price of the spoon the Government argues it gets resources to provide security to all Kenyans, build roads and train teachers, good enough. So we take the Government out of the list of "hangers on" and accept it as a necessary evil.

But when the Government pays too much attention to the other "hangers on" and quite often let them pay themselves more out of the spoon than is really worth "no value they add", then the Government lets insecurity encroach into the market. And this is partly what has put capitalism into crisis in the western world.

Now the biggest "crisis inducer" is the banker. When you want to buy property you go to the banker to borrow money. On this money you pay some interest, which, you assume, should cover the trouble the banker takes to get the money from somewhere, keep it and then lend it to you. That’s fine, so far so good. But from whence did the banker get the money?

Someone who owns Nakumatt and feared to keep the money at home took it to the bank for safekeeping. The bank then charges Nakumatt ledger fees for keeping the money in a current account; but if Nakumatt should choose to keep the money in a savings account the bank will pay a tiny interest in no way comparable to the one it charges the borrower. This is the way the bank makes money by adding no value at all to the making and selling of the spoon.

By hanging on to the coat strings of workers and owners of capital, the finance capitalists live pretty well.

Trouble comes when bankers over reach themselves and try to make much more money than the transactions going on in the supermarket. It becomes even worse when they are joined in this rat race of making money without producing value by the sooth-sayers, lawyers, and insurers. Everybody goes mad making money, money loses its value and the bubble bursts!